Manitoba Agriculture is agreeing with many farmers that we had a great start to this year’s growing season.

Scott Chalmers is the Manager of the Westman Agricultural Diversification Organization – a program put out by Manitoba Agriculture.

He says this year they probably have their biggest year ever, with over 3,000 test plot sites. “Normally we have around 2500-2600 plots but this year we were able to add more plots because of the really nice spring that we had for seeding,” says Chalmers.  

“Basically, every day we could seed. So we actually finished before May long weekend which is a record-breaker for us. And we continued into June just picking up new projects that we always wanted to do but maybe never had the time. So, we definitely made a lot of work for ourselves. But so far everything is looking really good!”

When specific projects are chosen, Chalmers says they try to pick ones that have an economic impact to the farmers. “We specialize in unbiased public research. And those are things that you can’t necessarily buy off the shelf. There may be things that you change on the farm, like something to do with residue on your soybeans, rotations, growing multiple crops together, that sort of thing… sort of like ‘systems farming’ is what we like to do. We still have some herbicide trials and lots of variety trials, but, we kind of venture off into the public domain there.”

Chalmers says during the winter months they review all the data and numbers they’ve collected throughout the summer, and try to make sense of it with the statistics. They write reports and plan for extension meetings.

“By enlarge, we’re planning for the next year quite intently, so there’s not much time to go over the data, but we try to do that in the winter, but we’ve got Ag Days, the Manitoba Agronomist Conference, the No-Till meetings in Minot.”

Chalmers describes the variety of soil types they try to represent.

WADO is getting ready for the Annual Field Day, to be held this year on July 25.

Chalmers says they invite not only farmers in the area, but also industry related to agriculture. They will start at 10 a.m. and will continue tours until 2:30 p.m. Lunch will be provided.

Pre-registration is preferred by calling the Manitoba Ag Office in Melita at 522-3256 by this week Friday, July 21.